Silence
by miscreant rose
Summary: From the tumblr prompt: "A moment alone with Thomas Gillan and Kitty Trevelyan"


**_Endless thanks to my sisters Lala-Kate and Cls2011 for the beta and feedback on this and my helpless flailing over a show they have yet (I hope) to watch. I cannot even begin to express on how many levels The Crimson Field speaks to me, but it is about on the same number of those that make me rage._**

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**Silence**

The distant rumble of artillery was more felt than heard now, the irregular echoes and vibrations under foot or a cot almost comforting to a sleeping body now.

It was when it was silent that fear would crawl in.

It was with silence that hell would begin to arrive as the still was broken by the sound of engines, creaking cart wheels, and that particular scream of dying men.

He started into the murky space above him, trying to see anything but the images that still played across his mind, even as he was awake. A puzzle of muscle and bone and veins, warm and slick in his fingers, needed pieces hidden by blood and mud. If he could find a way to put it all back together, to just make it all fit again….

Palms pressed to eye sockets that burned with exhaustion. Pulling himself up from his sleepless rest, he stood in the opening of his tent, searching for something, anything. It was a quiet night in that the shells were raining with a regularity that made the earth shift and sigh, and no new patients arrived. The long tent of one of the wards was dimly lit. but it was the solitary glow from the tent at the back of the encampment that drew his attention.

Pulled as a moth to the flame, he walked the boards to the morgue in a ghostly silence. Shadows of her silhouette danced across the khaki of the canvas, and he knew who he would find before he even lifted the flap.

As always, she worked with a quit efficiency, a gentle respect, even to those now soulless lumps of flesh she washed. Limbs were peeled and undressed under her sure hands, carefully separated from the mud and blood and torn bits of uniform, wounds bandaged one last time before the simple white sheet was wrapped around them.

Dark eyes flicked up once to acknowledge him, but she remained focused on her patient. She eased away the rust-stained khaki of a uniform from an arm and shoulder mangled beyond repair. Without a word, he stepped forward helping to roll the heavy weight away so she could peel off the rest of his shredded tunic.

She began to bathe a torso that was more gaping hole than flesh, the water running crimson into her basin. At a loss, he began to chip away dried mud from boot laces, unwinding the still soaked garters from legs that would no longer run.

Two healthy legs, unscathed. The man on the ward tonight, the one he tried to piece back together, the one whose veins and bones he could still feel slipping through his fingers, his legs were turning to ash in the crematorium. Here were two legs without a scratch on them, and they were as useless as that poor living bastard's were.

She was washing his face, pale skin emerging from under the dirt and dried blood. Blue eyes still stared open in surprise, despite her efforts to ease them shut. Her hands were steady, almost loving as she tended the first and last time to his injuries, as she slicked back the hair from his forehead, as she tried to arrange torn skin to cover gaping wounds before wrapping them in grayed linen.

They worked in a steady tandem, not a word between them. Her hands paused slightly as she settled the dull brown discs on the leather cord around his neck. Very carefully, she snipped one off, setting it on the cart that held her basin. Then the white sheet billowed up over him, awash in the light and shadows of the night before it settled down over the soldier, a featureless terrain created, giving the illusion of a man whole beneath.

With one last assistance from him, she tied the gray wool blanket around him. Her pencil made a faint scratching noise on the card as she initialed it and pinned it over where his chest would be. She picked up the other card, the one filled out who knows how long ago in his own hand with contact information. Retrieving the removed identity disc, she turned them over in her hand before slipping them into her pocket. Then stooping, she pulled off two brass buttons from his uniform, dunking them in the last bit of cleanish water before drying them, and slipping them into her pocket as well.

There was a moment of hesitation, a sigh that was felt in the soul and not heard before she gathered the basin and dirty linens. Balancing them on one hip, she carefully wiped down the cart with one last clean bit of linen. She glanced up at him, a pause that needed no words before moving back through the shadows of the tent and out into the dark.

Hands hanging idle at his sides, he was left with the white and gray cloaked forms. And a puzzle he would never be able to make whole.

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_**prompt: **__**A moment alone with Thomas Gillan and Kitty Trevelyan**_


End file.
